At the Other End of a Dirt Road

Yesterday Domingo and José, two of the Kekchi missionaries, took us to one of the villages they found with no church. It is 2 hours off the main road on this dirt road. The name of the village is Secacau (say-caw-cawoo). Please pray for this village. There are no Christians in it yet.

First I have to say that Domingo and José truly love these people. While so many people on this earth are consumed with physical gain, these two men have chosen to forsake the little bit that they have for the eternity of complete strangers. It is one thing to be a missionary from the States full of Christians and churches who faithfully support and pray for you, it is a completely different world to be a missionary from Guatemala.

These men spend their life on dirt roads locating villages like these. There are plenty of them, but they are hidden in the jungle. Sometimes they just drive for hours on back roads looking for villages. The Kekchi have started a Christian radio station out of Sayaxché and sometimes people will call in and ask for someone to come to their village. Once they find them, they make contact and spend months just building a relationship so that they can then be given permission to start a work in their village.

This is where we held the medical clinic.

We got there and they weren’t too sure about us at first.

We passed out numbers.

Dr. Andy set up under a tree. The Kekchi missionaries had found a Christian nurse that was willing to come with us and translate from Kekchi to Spanish for Dr. Andy.

Jimmy & I were just there basically for crowd control... which is a little tough when we don’t speak Kekchi and they don’t speak Spanish.

The kids had fun playing frisbee with Jimmy!

Gabriel was in charge of the pharmacy. He is from Gaute. He and his future wife, Sheila, have surrendered to move to Petén as missionaries after they get married in June. We are very excited about that!

Sebastian is a friend of Andy’s who is trained to pull teeth. He and his wife were able to help a lot of people yesterday. We heard of one person who had 5 teeth pulled! These people are very brave. Afterwards they are always holding their bleeding gums and trying to say thank you.

How would you like to go to the dentist with an audience?!

It started raining, so Dr. Andy had to move indoors. It got pretty dark since there was no electricity. The kids were sitting on top of the walls watching.

This lady has twins. I had a really good picture of her balancing one in a sheet wrapped around her head and hanging down her back while she nursed the other one... it was very impressive but the photo was removed by my editor!

The little black tarp down this path was the outhouse that most of us had the pleasure of visiting... the hardest part was balancing in the mud!

This was one of the poorest places we have seen. Most of the men and boys have boots to work in the fields, but most of the ladies and girls did not have any shoes.

This is Jimmy talking to some of the men in the village, some of them spoke Spanish a little. Afterwards they all came to thank everyone for coming. The ladies prepared fish for us before we left.

It was the whole fish! I had to take a picture of it to see it because we were eating in the dark. It had a delicious flavor!

These are the ladies that prepared it for us!

{Making corn tortillas}

The 2 missionaries, Domingo and José are in the blue shirts. They are a lot of fun!

They were watching us eat to make sure we liked it!

Domingo is in the center with some of the people from the village. Jimmy, Gabriel, Dr. Andy, & his son are standing in the back. This last picture is with Sebastian and his wife.

Dr. Andy was able to see everyone from the village in one day which worked out good since he is very busy while he is here. Unfortunately we had nowhere to show the movie because of the rain and we had a long trip back anyway, so it was probably much safer since we left at that time. Jimmy and I are going to go back soon with Domingo and José to show it.

Please pray for this village and the 50 other villages just like it that these Kekchi men have found. There are countless more that still have not been reached.

Happy New Year

Our Bible studies went great on Sunday. We have been a little concerned. When we first arrived in New Horizon the Catholic church was not open very often and we could not find anyone who could tell us anything about Jesus Christ. Jimmy spoke to one of the men in the village who said he was Catholic. He said that he didn’t really believe any of that stuff, but that it was just tradition. Many people in New Horizon do not even believe God exists. We really see a need in the village and that is why we felt God leading us to it. Well, when the Catholic church found out that adults were starting to come to our Bible studies and that the attendance to our kids Bible study was growing they started having weekly services. We had scheduled our Bible studies starting at 4:00 on Sunday afternoons so as to not cause any strife.

We heard recently that the mothers in the village had gotten together to discuss why more kids were coming to our Bible study than were going to the Catholic church. The mothers said that they don’t tell their kids what to do, and they can go where they want. They said that the kids want to go hear our Bible stories, and they don’t want to go to the Catholic church.

Sunday we found out that because of our Bible Studies, the Catholic church has decided to move their services to Saturdays. They are blaming us for their low attendance (something that existed way before us) and so are changing in hope that people will come now. The Boggs told us that similar things happened to them. The Catholic church was not interested in a certain area, but when they started a work there that was beginning to grow, they decided to get more involved in the community.

The kids were laughing because I asked who has sinned and the kids replied “everybody.” One of the teenage guys that was listening through the window yelled, “not me!” He was a little too well know to make that claim!

The Bible study was about reaping what you sow. Jimmy brought 10 bags of different seeds and they had to identify what fruit it was. No one got kiwi right. They said it was imported fruit!

Because of the drama that our recent team did, we were able to reach some more teenagers that we did not have a relationship with before. One of these was Carlos. He played the dad in the second scene. He is Jaime and Eliu’s older brother if some of you know who they are. Anyways, he came to our Bible Study for the first time this Sunday. Throughout our rehearsals, he had been hearing the plan of salvation. He was hanging around afterwards on Sunday night and Jimmy asked him, “Are you ready to accept Jesus yet?” He said yes! Jimmy said, “Do you know how?” and Carlos replied, “Not really.” Jimmy took him through the Romans Road and he understood each part. Afterwards he prayed on his own, “God save me. I know I’m a sinner and I need your salvation.” This is our second man to get saved here. He is 18 with a second grade education. He is also the oldest guy in his family. Please pray for him as we begin to disciple him. Pray that his family sees a change in his life and wants what Carlos now has!

Amy and Carlos

One last thing to pray about. Luis told us last night that in the next town assembly meeting, he is going to ask for us to have land in the village to build a church on. Once again, he is the town council presidents nephew, so hopefully his word will go a long ways.

When It Rains It Pours... Literally

You have to wade through our house still. I do not think there is a window in our house that does not leak. All of them are mini bay windows that stick out far enough to catch all the rain and it rained all day yesterday.

Our house (where we live now in Xela) is the yellow one in the center. Jimmy’s mom took this picture when she was here.

Please pray for us right now. I wish Satan would just figure out that we are staying. There are so many opportunities coming up in the next couple of months, so Satan is busy trying to discourage us. Please pray for our encouragement. Today Jimmy and I went through all the ways we could see God’s presence since we have been here. I am so thankful for Jimmy. We just want to see that God is working. As long as He is with us everything is worth it.

Rain Already?

Every time I go to the market it rains, even during the dry season. Our house is flooding. We thought that we would be moved before it started raining again. I wish I could describe how much water is in our house right now.

The property manager never gets the man over to our house that is supposed to fix anything. Our stairs have water standing on them. Lucha is so cute, she takes one step at a time so she doesn’t slide down them.

This was the first time Lucha experienced rain. She wanted to go outside to sniff it. She licked some rain up and then decided it was too much like the baths that she hates, so she asked to come in. Afterwards she barked at us to tell us she did not appreciate us taking so long to open the door.

Linda and I went to the market today. She walked by this cow leg and said that she wanted to eat that piece all by herself! She was helping get some prices on fabric for curtains in our new house. Thick curtains do a whole lot to help keep a room cool when you do not have air-conditioning. (We will have one for our bedroom). The Petén is the hottest place I have ever been. Our new house has 12 foot ceilings, that should help with the heat, but it also has several windows in every room. Please pray that I can find some good deals on fabric to at least get some curtains up in the main living space.

Today I found some fabric and Linda asked how much it cost. The man told her one price and then when he saw that I was going to buy it he changed the price and said that he never quoted the other one. (Usually having Linda with me gets me the good price too) I tried to ask him some other questions and he just acted like I was not there... I get that sometimes, Jimmy does too. I am not sure why, some people just do not like North Americans, most are very friendly though. Jim and I know which people in which stores give us fair prices now. Soon we will have to start from scratch with the market in the Petén.

Juan and Andrés’ mom came to church with them yesterday for the first time. Please pray for her. Her sons are so faithful and desire for their mom to know the Lord. Their two little brothers have been watching their example and said that they want to be missionaries too.

We also have another personal prayer request if you could pray for it right now as you read. Thanks!

Myths: in Guatemala

Jimmy bought a political magazine in the Petén because it had a defamatory statement about gringos on the cover and we wanted to know why.

I translated several articles for my spanish class. The article about gringos was full of lies. Many Guatemalans are angry with the Sates because of visas. Linda said that another magazine did a study and said that only 2 people per day get their visas approved. Anybody could go down to the embassy and see that this is not true. Unfortunately you do not have to have any proof for things, spoken word is accepted as truth. I think it is partly because many people cannot read.

Another article in this magazine was about Xiliquito, a species that is part man, part cow. No one has actually seen it and lived to tell about it, but everyone knows about it. You can catch it and it will be your slave and make you rich. Linda said that she heard that scientist from the States cloned it illegally and it got free and came down here to Guatemala. Every area has a different take on the story. This would be like someone in the Sates picking up a Time magazine and reading about this creature like it was fact, it is an accepted publication.

Another more famous rumor completely accepted as truth is that gringos come to Guatemala to kidnap children to harvest their organs. I asked Linda about this and she said that this is absolutely true, several people have been arrested. The thing is that if you look suspicious, especially in indigenous areas, you do not get arrested, you get lynched. Afterwards they find the missing child, but that doesn’t matter, the gringo was there to kidnap Guatemalan children. We were warned by the pastor in Huehue, not to let the medical team pay a lot of attention to children because they have had problems in that area with gringos kidnapping children. I am always careful not to take many pictures of children I do not know. I do not think we would ever be able to adopt a Guatemalan child because people would think that we stole him/her. This is a serious thing here, there is even a warning on our government’s website.

A Week of Outreach

We have been making plans for our first outreach in New Horizons. We were not planning on a team coming down, but God just worked everything out. It is the youth group from my home church in Jacksonville, so we wanted to plan some activities to take advantage of them! These are our ideas so far. I have asked Linda about some of our ideas just to make sure they are culturally relevant.

Thursday: Kids' Day

face painting

games

piñatas

skits

Friday: Ladies' Day

crafts

pedicures

Saturday: Men's Day

soccer tournament

Sunday: Family Day

movie

snacks

skits

testimonies

Today during Jimmy’s Greek class he told the guys our ideas and they were very excited too. They said it would be very effective and helped us with some details that we would not have thought of ourselves. Several want to come with us and help. It is important to have other Guatemalans with you. Many of them said they want to use these same ideas in their churches.

The purpose of this outreach is to make relationships in this village. Everything will build up to the last night where we can show a christian film and give the plan of salvation. We will not give anything away during these days other than our friendship. We do not want them to think they need to please us in order to get more things from us. There decisions must be sincere. We desire changed lives and plan on investing years of our lives in discipling the people that truly do accept the Lord.

Please begin to pray for this outreach in New Horizons. It will be one of the last 2 weeks in July.

Coming Together

Jimmy has still been calling churches to give pastors updates. This is good to do every now and then so that they remember who you are, you can tell them thank you, and also many times a church’s email address will change. Last week we lost $100 a month support, but this week one of the pastors told Jimmy that they had increased our support by a $100 a month! God already took care of this loss for us.

Jimmy put together this video of our new house.

We are very excited about this next stage of our life. Jimmy’s mom is coming down the first week of May to help us clorox and paint. Our parents were excited when we told them about the house, but after they saw pictures, they were concerned. After they saw the video they are encouraged again. This house is a real blessing. It is large enough to have teams come and eat with us and for the smaller teams to actually stay. I have always wanted a long picnic table to feed teams at. Can you believe the owner left us a huge table. We can make some benches and it will probably seat 15 people.

We stopped by New Horizons when we were in the Petén, but we could not find the mayor. We are excited about having a team come down in July to hold 4 days worth of activities to start a work in this camp. We found out yesterday that a youth group is serious about coming. Please pray for us and this team as all the plans are coming together. Jimmy’s brother and friend are also coming during that time to help. I updated our Ministry page if you would like more information about what God has placed in our hearts to do in the Petén.